Tuesday, October 16, 2012

They know where you live

After Dudley and Birmingham
councils are banned from using the DVLA database because of widespread abuse,
when are we going to wake up to this fact that Big Brother is watching us at
every turn? What chance patient confidentiality once they compete a national
NHS database, for instance?

Puffed up

Every year or so, a group of self-appointed experts calls
for drug use to be made legal. These self-same do-gooders would outlaw
cigarette smoking, ban drink-drivers for life and impose a massive "fat
tax" on fast food. I fear they are probably right to say we lost the
"war on drugs" years ago. But if you legalise the use of drugs,
surely you have to make their supply legal too. And where do you draw the line
between "soft" and "hard" drugs?

Lions and donkeys

They couldn't run the armed forces. They wasted billions on
defence systems we don't need or don't work. Now they are hiring out their
services as lobbyists for foreign arms manufacturers. Are there no depths or
top brass won't sink to? We lost in Afghanistan years ago. Talk about
lions led by donkeys.

Welcome to the real
world

MPs should be encouraged to have jobs outside Parliament not
forced to give them up. A cap or even a ban on outside earnings would mean
simply more full-time professional politicians with less and less connection
with the real world. So much the worse for the rest of us.

Yes or no to in or
out?

The Tories can fiddle about all they like with with bits of
the EU but the only referendum worth its name would be a simple one: In or out?

Abandon ship

If they make that tedious twit Lord Turner, the euro-loving
ex-CBI boss, governor of the Bank of England we may as well all abandon ship
and move to Greece.

Do you still need them?

As we celebrate 50 years of the Beatles and the Stones
prepare for more concerts, we should rejoice that John, Paul, George and Ringo
gave up while the going was good. Anyone paying a grand to see the Stones must
have more money than sense.